Electrocardiographic Changes in the Off-Medication State in Parkinson'S Disease

Abstract

Introduction: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor and non-motor manifestations. PD patients frequently exhibit non-motor features, such as sleep disturbances, impaired sense of smell (hyposmia), visual changes, neuropsychiatric, and autonomic abnormalities. Orthostatic hypotension is the most frequent feature of autonomic dysfunction in PD. This is the first study to our knowledge to evaluate the outcomes of screening PD patients on ECGs at the ON and OFF medication states. Materials and methods: We assessed cardiac rate, P wave, PR interval, QRS duration, QT interval, corrected QT (QTc) interval and T wave on ECGs at the ON and OFF medication states in 23 PD patients. Present study was made on patients with non-tremor dominant subtype of idiopathic PD. From each patient, ECGs were obtained at both the OFF (i.e., after 12 hours without dopaminergic treatment) and ON periods. ECG findings at the ON and OFF medication states were compared with each other. Results: Mean age was 65,9 +/- 10.3 years. There were no significant differences between ECG findings at the ON and OFF medication states. Our study demonstrated that there were no electrocardiographic changes at the OFF medication state in PD patients. Conclusion: Electrocardiogram changes in the on and off periods of patients with Parkinson's disease was not studied before. Our study examined these changes and did not find any differences. This result can mean that we can be comfortable about the cardiac disorders that may occur during the off period of Parkinson's disease patients.